1. Important INOW Reminders for Teachers 1. Please review your Board Position Statement on grading and keep grades accurate and current in INow. 2. Verify grades carefully and remember to recalculate and repost after any grade change! 3. Incomplete grades must be recorded as a “0” with comment 16 “incomplete grades” since INow does not support a letter grade with a null value in the grade scale. 4. Blank or missing grades in gradebook adversely affect student averages. Teachers are encouraged to enter scores for all students for all activities or use the appropriate “drop” process to exclude activity from student average. 5. For the 2014-2015 school year teachers should not use the “copy gradebook” option that copies activity setup from the previous academic session. Because of known issues in the software, behind the scenes problems in gradebook are created and cannot be corrected. The issue has been reported to STI support for development and should be corrected for 2015-2016 academic session.

2. Winter Update Heading Hyperlinks Prior to the winter 2013 update users were required to double click on a column heading in the teacher grade book scores tab to cycle through the grade entry screen. With the winter 2013 update, this has been changed to a single click, which allows iPad or other tablet users to cycle through activity score entry. Double “clicking tapping” is not support on most touchscreen devices. NOTE: The operation of the “click” is the same. If the user places a check next to student(s) and clicks – taps the column heading, the screen will cycle through the selected students. If no students are selected, the screen will cycle through all students for the activity.

3. With this change teachers are no longer required to create an activity called semester exam. Classroom/Grade book/View a class/Click Student Average under Manage. Click the graded item column next to the student. A new exempt checkbox has been added. Check if the student is exempt from the graded item (ex. Semester exam). If the exempt box is checked, data entry will not be allowed in the direct field. The semester exam grade should be entered into the direct column and will be posted to the grade file for calculation as 10% of the grade. Exam grade or “exempt” status must be entered for all students for all classes. (If exam setup does not appear in gradebook (elementary schools) this procedure does not apply. Winter Update Student Averages/Exempt/Exam-Direct

4. Summer Update Page 4-5 The list of available sections now includes the same section in which the teacher is working…ie., Journalism 0120 section 3. When users select the same section, they will have the ability to select either the section start date or a specific start date. Users may also check the activities to be copied. When the start date is specific, the user should select the earliest date on which the earliest activity is to start. Out of the selected activities to copy, the activity with the earliest start date will be copied to the specified date. The remaining activities will be copied based on the days that are marked as “IN SCHOOL” in the calendar. NOTE: When a user attempts to copy an activity to a date that is not an in-school date Information NOW will use the next in-school date. If there are no remaining in-school dates, the system will copy the activity to the last day of the scheduled term.

5. Exam/Semester View in Grade book Summer Update Page 6-7 The average setup screen has been modified. A setting has been added that allows teachers to see more than one average on grade book scores tab. Classroom/Grade book/View/Average Setup under Manage. Column headings can be clicked to sort the list Averages are now sorted by default by grading period, the sequence of graded item. A new “show in grade book” option allows teachers to choose additional items to show in grade book under the scores tab. Example: for schools with four grading periods/two terms, during the second grading period the teacher may want to see column for the first 9 weeks’ grade, final exam and semester average.

6. Progress Report/Report Card Comments Summer Update Page 7-9 Classroom/Grade Book/View/Comment Setup under Manage. Board approved report card comments appear in the drop list with a lock icon. Locked comments cannot be edited by the teacher. On the Comments tab, the progress report comment still shows in the Comments. If a report card comment is selected for the student, a green triangle will display on the student averages screen. This screen is now a combination of the previous Progress Report comment screen and the Report Card comment screen (previously entered under Manage/Student Averages.) This new combination screen allows the teacher to see/edit progress report comments while selecting report card comments for the grading period.

7. Student Average Screen Update Summer Update Page 10-11 The student averages screen has been updated. The header has been updated to include both the grading period code and graded item name. Graded items are sorted by grading period and then graded item sequence. Teacher created averages will appear at the end of the list. The horizontal scroll bar has been moved from the bottom of the grid to the top of the grid. When the user clicks to edit a cell, the Edit Average screen has been redesigned. The average name is now a label in the header of the screen. The header also displays the grading period and the sequence. Fro teacher created averages, the grading period and sequence is hidden. The NOTES textbox has been modified to allow one unique note per grading period.

8. Previous Day Attendance Summer Update Page 13

9. Maximum Score of Activity Summer Update Page 13